Quiver
by nlizzette7
Summary: "Perhaps Chuck Bass is a cold bachelor in the most literal sense of the word - but she does not try to thaw his ruthlessness away." CB, Prompt response.
1. Part One: Quiver

**A/N: **A response to the prompt on Tumblr: _Chair + Vampires_. Thought I'd post, just for the heck of it. I don't usually write supernatural...anything, so please go easy on me. And, as always, thanks for reading! xo, N.

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**Quiver.**

Perhaps there are others before there is Blair. Perhaps he was alone before he was not. Perhaps there were eras and eras before her fragile fingers found purchase upon his still pulse and wrought a quiver that threatened impossibility. Before he woke to the whiff of peonies and Parisian pastries that held promise – that held a desire for humanity that he had never once cared for before.

And perhaps Chuck Bass is a cold bachelor in the most literal sense of the word - but she does not try to thaw his ruthlessness away.

"Chuck Bass." Blair tries his name on for size when they first meet, allows him to slide a glass filled with brown liquid into her hand. He owns the seat she's sitting in, the bar, the entire city – but his throat is suddenly dry, craving – and he wants to own her. But as if she can read his mind, she taunts, "You can't have me."

"Blair Waldorf," Chuck muses, touches her arm, breathes her in. "Society's little princess." There is desire here, but he cannot comprehend it. He drinks and disposes, and his dead heart only closes upon itself. But now he wants to touch those soft brown ringlets, wants to carry her across the world and watch her face light up beside the River Seine, wants her to tug on his coat jacket as they bask upon the sight of ancient chapels.

_The irony of his wish does not escape him._

"This is sweet," Blair states, lifts her glass, takes another sip. "_I _am not."

"No?"

"No," Blair echoes. Her dress is long, it drapes across his legs, and he feels as if she's doing it on purpose. Too lustful to keep it at bay – too prideful to let it slip. So he indulges her, toys the fabric of her cream Oscar de la Renta between two of his fingertips as the rest of New York City holds a world of its own just outside. But even after years of observing in the shadows, wandering on his own, drowning in the riches it has to offer, he barely notices.

"People talk about you," Blair says quite curiously. "They say things…they're afraid." Chuck guesses that she is more afraid of damaging her reputation than she is of the lethally cut molars implanted behind his full lips. He's amused by this, amused by everything she does, by all that she is.

"Women, I'm guessing."

"Have you had many?"

"Are you always jealous of strangers?"

Blair narrows her eyes, swings her head back to study the man who dares to keep up with her pace – the one she's been careful to set above all the rest. She remembers her high school sweetheart, her college prince, but they pale in comparison to the way he makes her heart forget its purpose.

"Of all the women in Manhattan…" Blair rolls her eyes, and he learns her in just a few seconds. This is the way she lies. This is the way she wants him. "Could you not find another to trail?"

"Yes," Chuck replies, lecherously, honestly. "But I choose you."

Hours later, she is sober enough to know that the bar is as empty as the world she lives in, enough to know that his hands are on her neck, on the bodice of her dress. Drunk, yes. But sober enough to know that she does not regret it.

"Are you afraid of me?" Chuck whispers the words against the pulse point beneath her skin. She is dusted with pink, burning hot when he is oddly cold. He cannot be real, _this _should not be real. His teeth graze her skin, his lips suckle, and then he repeats… But it is. And it's terrible. And Blair loves it.

"I'm Blair Waldorf," she whispers as an answer to his question, anchors herself with clawing fingers down his back. "I'm not afraid of anyone."

"I'm not anyone," Chuck rasps, braces himself, draws all he has for a girl who could potentially destroy the indestructible. His teeth sink into the crevice between her neck and shoulder. Blood bursts from her skin, and, somehow, she doesn't panic. She grips him tighter, eyes rolled back, hips rolled forward, fingers tangled in his hair. He is aroused to the point of blind madness, but he somehow finds the control to ask –

"Are you sure?"

She does not need to see his eyes, does not need to see the strained veins announcing his thirst all around them. Blair simply presses her cheek to his, makes the most sinister of moments sweet, and replies, "More."

And so he bites her again.

And, in her own way, she bites back.


	2. Part Two: Linger

**A/N: **Dedicated to Mary, who made this one-shot a multi-chap when she showed me Ed in a leather jacket and knew that I could not resist.

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**Linger.**

The room smells of Bourbon when Blair wakes, but the taste of roses lingers on tongue. Her legs are tangled in satin trappings – the finest bed sheets she's ever laid upon. She's flat on her stomach, but light does not pour onto her back as it usually does when her maid bustles in with morning scones at home. She is not in her own bed. She is barely in her own body.

Blair moans, a twinge of pain coating the small sound, and her fingers slide until they find the skin at the nape of her neck. She is blistered, is bruised, panics at the feel of raised, scarred skin. The welt on her neck is not one of a love bite carried away – it is one that went _very _wrong.

She doesn't expect roses, and there aren't any – not a single stray petal, not an ounce of personality coloring the penthouse's dimly-lit corridors. Blair clutches her neck with one small hand, leads a trail of satin sheets wrapped around her petite body behind her. The walls are blank – no family portraits, nor remnants of warm nights accompanied by warmer conversation. Blair pauses a step, traces her finger over a golden finish. This is the lair of a man whose only friend is solitude.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Blair is so startled that she nearly drops the thin covering from her chest. She releases her hold on the wall, turns instead to the sharp angles of the most handsome face she's ever seen. He stands before her, black suit jacket draped over one shoulder, white shirt unbuttoned, hair quaffed perfectly, slick at the sides of his head.

She is speechless.

Blair Waldorf is _never _speechless.

"I hope you understand how decadent this sight is at such an early hour." Chuck's eyes are lit, his smile deadly. He gestures to her pale skin, dusted with shadows in this darkness, but he doesn't touch her once.

Blair lets out a steady pant. "I want to know – " One hand drops from her neck, reveals the beautifully disastrous scar imprinted just above her collarbone. Two little dents are punctuated into skin – an angry red fights its way through the blacks and blues. "I want to know what you've done to me."

Chuck is quizzical for a moment, so amused that she nearly blows steam until he says, "Your inquiry is going to have to be a tad more specific." His hand reaches out, and Blair shivers when one finger traces down the fabric of her sheet, unravels the knot over her chest, shrugs it across her skin. "There were so many things, so many little moves that made you break."

Blair's sigh is impatient, her tone demanding. "I want to know if…"

"You want to know if I stole away your virtue in the night," Chuck finishes. He is smug, and he is insistent. He is the last thing she wants, the only thing her body seems to crave. "The answer is no. I prefer my conquests conscious."

Blair doesn't seem so sure.

Chuck laughs at such hesitation, leans back against a post behind him, the hair on his chest thinning as it reaches his waist. "Would you like me to assist you in checking?" His eyes rake over her body, pinpoint every curve, every swell, every rise and thrum hiding underneath her delicious skin. "I can be quite thorough."

"I _don't _do this," Blair insists, mustering as much dignity as she can in such a flimsy garment. She tilts her chin up, forces herself to meet the unnatural amber tinting his eyes. They glint, and the move is inhuman.

It's something else. It's something _more_.

He smiles. "Because you're a good girl." The words come across much naughtier than Blair can stand.

She frowns. "Because I'm a _proper _girl."

"Don't play shy now, sweetheart." The term of endearment is not endearing at all. "Not when you were mewling in my ear last night, clinging to me, _challenging _me like a little minx." Blair's gaze follows the line of his chin, jutting up to where it meets his smooth jaw. Her mind skirts for flashes of her small fingertips tracing that line on the night before, her smile as his teeth pressed further, and then further still into her skin.

Her throat tightens at the thought.

And then he continues, "But you are proper, aren't you?" Chuck sets his mouth into a straighter line. "You didn't throw yourself at me as the usual bore would. You were coy, and you were clever. You were trying to rise after they've stifled you for so long." He lets out a chilled breath that just barely kisses her skin. "What? Did your mother forget to lock up the tower? Did your gentleman of the week forget to chase after you at midnight?"

Blair narrows her eyes. "What did you do to my neck?"

"You're a smart girl, Waldorf. I think you know."

"What _are _you?"

Chuck pauses. "I think you know that, too."

"You took advantage of me."

"And yet still – here you are. Naked. In my penthouse."

Blair curls into herself, trembles under her veil of sheets. The closer he is, the colder she gets – the more she clings to the promise of safety, the gates of luxury before her Park Avenue penthouse.

"I want my clothes," she says evenly. "And then I want to go."

Chuck parts his lips to say something, and she watches him change his mind, choosing instead to breathe, "By all means." He waves his hand, gestures to the room she's just come from. "I won't keep your Oscar de la Renta hostage any longer." He smiles at her – not quite at her face – when he says, "I only want the garment if it comes with its model."

But Blair misses that last quip as she storms off and into the grand room, paying no attention to details as she shoves her dress on over her head, ruffling her curls as she slides a heel onto her foot, its arch aching in protest. He's there when she eventually finds the door, and Blair breezes past him, clutches her neck as she goes.

"You're fine." Chuck's murmur is sure yet desperate when Blair pauses at his door, one hand poised over brass, eyes trained on the medley of carved wood and golden arches before her. "You threw yourself at me – " He smirks at this fact. " – But nothing got _so _carried away. Your…virtue is still intact."

Blair's neck aches in argument, but she murmurs, "Fine."

"I'll have my car – "

"Don't bother."

But her steps aren't as determined when she enters a grand hall, a marble path that leads only to one pair of elevator doors. Blair imagines what he must think of her, imagines a light too blinding after curling up in shadows all night long. She is resolved not to falter, but feet are just as fickle as the human heart.

"Blair?"

And she does like the way he says her name.

When she spins around, Chuck is standing there, dressed in smugness and silk, leaning casually against his doorframe, toying with the collar of his own shirt as he smiles at her. Blair can just make out the faint print of lipstick - a dip that matches her cupid's bow – on his shirt. She exhales, stares at him because, for once in her life, she's not sure of her next step.

But none of that matters – not when he's able to cross the little hall in half of a second, so swiftly that Blair stumbles back, nearly falls against the wall before he catches her just in time. She can't fathom his speed, cannot understand his slickness. Her lips are parted, her breath is heavy. Blair is quick enough to know she shouldn't be there – but not enough to will herself to go.

"I shouldn't."

His fingers curl into the fabric of her dress, press into the skin around her spine, and his scent envelopes her – so sweet its sickly. Chuck whispers, "But you are." There's a blind breeze, a heady pull, and she's swept from her feet, the echo of a door slamming in the distance sounds in her ears. All of a sudden, she's drowning in his sheets, staring up at his ceiling as her dress is ripped away from her flesh. Blair gasps against the cold, fingers digging into sheets to keep her anchored.

"I'll have hundreds more made for you," Chuck murmurs, gesturing to the ruined shreds of her gown.

"I don't need you to," comes Blair's indignant reply.

"But I'll want to," Chuck combats. "You haven't experienced anything." Her body is bare, his shirt is slipping from his shoulders. "But you want it, don't you? You've been waiting for this – " He presses his nose into the hollow of her throat and his inhale matches hers. " – haven't you?" He craves what she does – of that Blair is sure – but there's another fire in his eyes. There's something else he wants. And although Blair can barely understand it, she lolls her head to the side, outstretches the curve of her neck, holds the beating pale skin right under his line of vision.

Chuck trembles – just a moment – before he snaps.

Harsh fingers rake into her hair, yank her head forward so that he can see her flushed cheeks, so that he can see her eyes – the eyes that beg to be unafraid. But her heart does not listen to those pleas.

His hand slips down between their bodies, but Blair does not catch his intentions. Instead, her eyes roll back as Chuck's thumb presses into her cheek, his hand cupping her jaw. "Do you even understand what you want?" She nods her head, not entirely coherent as his thumb searches her inner thigh, finds purchase in one particular spot. He presses a jagged piece of his cufflink to her skin. "You can break so easily…_I _break so easily." Metal chips flesh, draws a straight scarlet line across the inside of her thigh. Blood springs, pools, then falls as easily as rain against glass.

Her gasp is broken.

"You _don't _scare me," Blair insists, yanking _her _trembling fingers through his hair. Chuck is surprised when she pulls, yanks his head to the side – not in strength, just in lustful advantage. She bends her leg, raises her thigh, and his eyes flicker to the gathering red. His groan is guttural, and his hand encircles her thin ankle, shoves her leg further up and into the air. "You consider yourself lethal," she states, her own hand slipping down her stomach. Chuck pries his eyes away from the blood, watches as her fingers skirt further down. "Girls try you out and end up too petrified to return." Her fingers slide across her heat, knuckles brushing his erection through black slacks. She moans, watches him, guides his head closer to the open cut.

"Waldorf," Chuck warns, but the usually easy drawl now sounds weak. The way her fingers curl into his hair would pain any other, but they serve to steer him now, pushing until his lips hover just above the cut.

"Blair," she corrects, holding him still. Chuck glances up at her, eyes completely black, dangerously submissive under her fingertips. "This is _our _game now." She tilts her head back, sinks two fingers into her core. "Because I have what you want."

His lips brush her thigh when he speaks, his full lips coated even redder. Chuck licks his lips, hand sliding up to brace her thigh against his mouth. "I can take whatever I want," he rasps.

She's light-headed when she thrusts her fingers deeper, lifts her hips, frustrated by his tight hold on her. Blair smiles when his lips part, when his groan rumbles across her skin, and he sucks in. The pad of his other thumb finds her clit, circles the throbbing nub before pressing down. And his eyes close as he draws in, satisfies his thirst whilst quenching her ache.

"_Chuck_." The slew of words is inaudible during the moments that follow. The steady rhythm of her own fingers thrusting deeper, hitting against his pulsing thumb – the rush of blood down her limbs and onto his waiting tongue is intoxicating.

Blair's scream is raw when she breaks, body contracting, sweat coating her skin, center dripping wet, down her thighs.

Chuck's growl is harsh when he pulls away, bending to kiss her, the taste of sweet iron falling from his mouth to hers. He shoves her hand away, leaves her no time to protest when he finishes with one final thrust.

It's the lull of an earthquake.

The world is still – save for two trembling bodies.

Blair's curls tumble until they skim his cheek, and she doesn't breathe when he yanks his dress shirt – now stained in a collage of drying reds and browns – over her body. He is freezing when he envelopes her, and her body grows cold with sweat.

"I shouldn't," Blair murmurs sleepily, eyeing the drop of red smudging the corner of his lips.

But Chuck catches her smile as she says it, and he whispers, "But you _will_."


End file.
